Police: the inside story

PC Michael Pinkstone, author of This Victorian Playground, gives a no-holds-barred account of front-line policing – he highlights the political incompetence that has decimated common sense, proportion and perspective in policing

PC Michael Pinkstone is a front-line police officer
writing under a pseudonym. Like most police officers in the UK he has had enough of this pink and fluffy, wishy-washy, namby-pamby, insipid organisational b******s that has practically destroyed all morale, motivation and vision on the front line, and helped in the endless erosion of professionalism, discretion and effective policing.

It’s time to grow up and get real. It’s time to leave this playground…

This Victorian Playground is a combination of treatise, commentary, diatribe and memoir on policing in present-day Britain. It is absorbing, informative, convincing and hugely entertaining.

“I do solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm that I will well and truly serve the Queen in the office of constable, with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality, upholding fundamental human rights and according equal respect to all people; and that I will, to the best of my power, cause the peace to be
kept and preserved and prevent all offences against people and property; and that while I continue to hold the said office I will to the best of my skill and knowledge discharge all the duties thereof faithfully according to law…by doing lots of pointless, ineffective things…but in a streamlined, efficient and business - like manner.”

Written from the point of view of a shift constable, Michael highlights the political incompetence that has decimated common sense, proportion and perspective in the methodology of policing in the 21st century.

This first part of the trilogy highlights some issues that readers may already be aware of, such as performance-driven paranoia and target-related organisational obsessions, that are not only thoroughly bizarre but entirely detrimental to society.

The book examines in depth the neurosis with all things “diverse” and race-related and examines these issues in light of Britishness itself.

Interspersed with chapters dedicated primarily to such modern - day organisational phobias are sections that highlight the utter frustration of police officers, who are being forced to treat trivia and nonsense as crime worthy of investigation while being implicitly encouraged to mollycoddle alleged “victims” who are
often nothing of the sort.

All of this is compounded by an entirely risk-averse, blameconscious mentality, fuelled by political correctness gone more than mad.

The end result is a rather sobering view of a country that is falling into rack and ruin at the hands of indifferent, pathetic and obsequious fools, with no obvious way of sorting it all out, while real victims of real crime continue to pay the price.

The whole sordid picture is one of a nation that is almost entirely unable to take any responsibility for itself – yet a nation continually encouraged to do so by a weak and deferential Police Service, overseen by an entirely ineffectual and wheedling government.

The author’s main aim, however, is to provide a greater context to the situation than has previously been expressed in print, in a manner that is harsh,
detailed and uncompromising.

The language is strong throughout and there are descriptions of events and occurrences that some readers may find distressing.

This Victorian Playground should be seen as a complement to any other worthy publication about the police and aims to bring under one roof the concerns and troubles of a decaying organisation. While the issues raised in Part I may be very familiar to most serving police officers, the target readership for the book is not specifically police or police staff.

The book is aimed at those people in Britain who have a vested interest in the behaviour of government organisations and the future of British society in general, who may not be aware of just how insane it has all become in the world of British policing.

This Victorian Playground Part II; Arriving in the Van,
which will be published later this year, is more light-hearted and conversational and addresses the collective British psyche, indeed our very mentality, and aims to underpin the arguments put forward in Part I in a much more general way – providing even
more context to the current shambles.

Chapter 1 teaser
We begin this book by examining the current stalemate concerning the police and society – a stalemate wherein everyone blames everyone else, and no one really accepts responsibility for anything.

We are locked in a ceaseless tug-of-war between trying to deal with crime and social ignorance and not actually being able to deal with it.

Our ability to effectively combat the numerous social and cultural defects present within Britain is persistently undermined by a veritable festival of
poo. It’s a pageant of dung. A festoon of turds. A carnival of crap. A decorative wreath of doo-doos.

We are submerged beneath a cow pat of political and social incompetence so rich and abundant that the baneful fumes emanating from this extensive pile of
excrement have radically altered our minds and stripped us of our common sense.

A government that is both weak and insidious, limited by its own grovelling and spineless incapacity, has brought Britain to a shameful and shuddering stand-off. No longer is Britain a nation to be reckoned with. No longer do we stand with our heads held high.

Instead, our national pride has been replaced with a national guilt and a national sentiment of paranoia, where people of substance, grit and honour are overshadowed and undermined by sycophantic fools in ivory towers.

We’ve been sold off cheap to the lowest bidder. Abandoned. Deserted. Cast aside. Courage and fortitude rejected in favour of lapdog drooling and cushionplumping subservience.

A once mighty nation now pimping ourselves out like budget bitches: the tacky lipstick of political correctness and gaudy garlands of so-called human
rights doing little to cover up our emaciated and fragile frame.

We’re grovelling. Bowing down. Craving our next fix. Weak and pathetic and contemptible. Cringing and wheedling. Pleading. Entreating.

Honour and valour lying in overgrown graves and lonely cemeteries; the selfless sacrifice of millions engraved on neglected crosses of marble. Streets and pathways where once the feet of our worthy ancestors trod; now littered, filthy; stained with blood and vomit.

Britain has become a whorehouse of specious, pandering, political charity. All we do is tease and tickle, without any real satisfaction at the end of it. There’s nothing of substance. Nothing of focus. Nothing of permanence or stability.

We flit and flirt and f*** around: public urges and national needs met with short-term political fixes. Organisations left blustering, fussing and farting about, chasing pointless targets and seeking irrelevant goals.

Promises of social integration and community cohesion, spawned by vague and half-baked policies; insipidly inspired and indifferently implemented.

We’re fractured. Dislocated. Disjointed and disengaged. Postmodern values of life and living equating to nothing more than cultural wretchedness. So-called morality and decency little more than scummy, pitiable, diseaseridden ideals, oozing from every pus-filled social pore and orifice.

We’re encrusted with the filth of self-obsessed, self-conscious political inveigling; creating for ourselves little kingdoms; fiefdoms of municipal glory, yet ignoring the desperate cries of the forsaken and forgotten.

Those downtrodden souls who truly need a tough and tangible resolve to uphold their rights and liberties – tempered by compassion and humility; to cradle
them in secure and steadfast arms when the weight of despair crushes and smothers them, and emotion beleaguers them to the point of untold desolation.

For we will be defined by our actions and not our policies, and judged by the worthiness of our deeds in a world screaming out for justice and liberation.

Yet here we are, languishing in our civic citadels; chilling in our sanctimonious sanctuaries: political strongholds built upon insolvent promises and perfidious truths; an absolute abandonment of ethics in professional form.

Officialdom, bureaucracy, red tape: the justification for inaction; the pretext for organisational dysfunction.

In those distant halls of power, where pitiful political
puppets congratulate themselves on their empire-building; on their well-developed performance – look at all those ticks in all those boxes – aspirations of promotion and shoulder-rubbing; well-managed projects and glossy leaflets.

Nice fat bonuses for crap ideas. New conceptions and new spreadsheets. Sterilised morality; whitewashed humanity. A selfperpetuating administrative nightmare,
nourished by hapless internal two-stepping, and sustained by graceless acquiescing.

A shameful and humiliating defeat. An embarrassing charade of nervous grins and cringing nods…

And the implications of all of this? How does it relate to a man covered in egg? What do you do when you get two text messages you don’t want? Why are we so obsessed with diversity? Why was I rolling around on some random street last Christmas morning at 2am?

Why did the Government decide that the police were
“institutionally racist”? And why has our discretion gone forever, despite what a certain report might pretend to address?

This Victorian Playground Part I: Policing a Victim Culture in Britain is available from Melrose Books (www.melrosebooks.com) at £14.99, and from bookshops and online bookstores. Check out the author’s website: www.thisvictorianplayground.co.uk
for details of Part II.

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